Jack Shafer

If you read closely, you can almost glean a laugh track from the transcripts (pdf) of the oral arguments presented to the Supreme Court on Tuesday in the political lying case, Susan B. Anthony List v. Driehaus. The justices sprayed gentle ridicule and subtle sarcasm on Ohio State Solicitor Eric E. Murphy as he attempted to defend a state law that bans false statements during a political campaign.

The nation’s top spy has prohibited all of his spies from talking with reporters about “intelligence-related information” unless officially authorized to speak. Intelligence Community Directive 119, signed by Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper last month and made public Monday in a report by Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists, threatens to reduce the flow of information from the national security establishment to the press — and hence the public.

Later this month, the court will doff their robes and don their scuba gear to dive to the bottomless depths of the Fourth Amendment and determine whether police can search your mobile phone without a warrant, upon arresting you.

At the beginning of April, the New York Times launched its “Times Premier” digital offering, accessible to Times home delivery subscribers for another $10 every four weeks, on top of what they are already paying. A bewildering product, it seeks to up-sell existing Times customers to a more deluxe version of the Times.

The campaign finance decision the Supreme Court delivered Wednesday stirred all the same responses from all the same sources, with the anti-money faction bellowing that the Roberts court had now completed its plan — hatched with 2010’s Citizens Unitedruling — to put democracy up for sale. The pro-money crowd (to which I belong, by the way), heralded SCOTUS’s latest call as a victory for free speech.

A journalist hasn’t performed a full day’s work unless at some point he deprecates a competitor, either in print, in a public speech, or idly while exiting the building for lunch. News Corp chief executive Robert Thomson (Wall Street Journal; Times of London; New York Post; Australian; et al.) more than earned his pay Monday, when he rabbit-punched theWashington Post at an Advertising Week Europe conference in London. He castigated Post staffers, most of whom regard themselves as “high priests” of journalism, he said. Their self-worship has prevented them from making the necessary transformative digital switch, Thomson alleged.

Of the many ways nature can kill you, the landslide must be the most cruel. Not as cosmically spectacular as the tectonic tantrum of the earthquake or as catastrophic as pure weather-borne calamities (floods, hurricanes, tornados), the mudslide lies in wait like a heart attack, springing its localized force without much, if any, warning. It’s filthy, it’s bone-crushing, and it’s suffocating. Any trust you have in terra firma will promptly be upended.

When a big story breaks, my news digestion knows no satiety. Earthquake, assassination, invasion, bank run, political campaign, celebrity court case, sport scandal or a drunk stubs his toe on the Lower East Side — I can handle anything the press swarm sends at me.

The last place you’d expect to discover a map to navigate the future of the content-advertising landscape would be a book about the golden age of radio. But damn it all to hell, there it is on the concluding 12 pages of Cynthia B. Meyers’ new book, A Word From Our Sponsor: Admen, Advertising, and the Golden Age of Radio.

No sadder sack exists than the journalist in the twilight of his career. After decades of scrutinizing other individuals and their institutions, the soon-to-be-retired journo predictably looks inward and, if his editor indulges him, pens a heartfelt goodbye essay to his readers.